Atlanta Injury Attorney Blog

What Does the Legal Language in an Insurance Company Release really Mean?

Once you have negotiated a settlement of your personal injury claim with the at-fault driver’s insurance company, you will be sent a Release document by the insurer, along with a letter asking you to sign the Release and return it before receiving your settlement check. Release documents are drafted by lawyers and for lawyers. They make little sense when read by anyone else. In an effort to demystify the language most often found in insurance company Releases, we have provided several typical Release paragraphs (bolded below) and explained their intended meaning.

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The answer to the question of whether the other driver’s car insurance will pay your medical bills after an accident they cause, lies in the nature of the medical care, the timing and the character of the insurance company you are dealing with.
Part 1: Emergency Room Care:
When you have been involved in a serious car crash, paying for your emergency health care is probably not the first thing on your mind. This is understandable. Survival and recovery are the primary concerns, and the fact that emergency care is often rendered before any mention is made of payment pushes the issue even further from your mind. Unfortunately for those with health insurance, hospitals often take advantage of a trauma patient’s preoccupation with their injuries, and ignorance of the medical system, to burden them with significant bills that they should not have to pay.

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On Monday February 6, 2012, the legal newspaper for Fulton County, the Fulton County Daily Report ran an article about a Judge in Columbus ordering Kenneth S Nugent PC to pay $12,000 to Floyd Medical Center for a bill that originally cost $3,836.

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When faced with a life threatening emergency, often our first thought is to dial 911 for fast help and advice. We hear the panicked calls on the evening news all the time and pray that we never have to make use of the service. 911 operators are trained to quickly gather essential information from the caller so they can arrange for appropriate emergency personnel to respond. They are also trained to give advice to callers while emergency help is on the way. The advice and assistance given by 911 operators can make the difference between life and death. But they are human and imperfect and some are downright incompetent.

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“The insurance company is offering a settlement; is it a fair settlement offer?” I get this call at leas wife a week and when the caller is represented by an Atlanta car accident attorney already, it is disconcerting because that is who the question would be directed to. Nevertheless, this article wil tackle the two most common scenarios that result in this phone call; do it yourselfers and people represented by lousy lawyers.

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With the holidays recently coming to a close, many people are looking back on late-night gatherings they enjoyed with friends and family throughout the season. While most holiday parties go smoothly, however, from our experience practicing law we know that many of these events end in DUI charges and other alcohol-related legal problems. Historically, alcohol has had a complex relationship with the law, ranging from outright prohibition in the 1920s to modern-day task forces monitoring underage drinking near fraternity houses. Because of this, laws are refined and changed rather frequently, and one of the most important examples is the Georgia Supreme Court’s reinforcement of the Dram Shop Act last July.

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We heard the sirens as my wife and I walked to the Chik Fil A Bowl to watch Virginia get crushed by Auburn and it was not until the next day that we read about the tragic collision that took the life of the wife of an Atlanta Braves trainer. She was killed when her SUV was struck by a Georgia State Patrolman speeding to help another officer in a traffic stop. The patrolman was not in pursuit of anyone at the time and had his lights activated but witnesses disagree on whether his siren was active. It is undisputed that he entered the intersection on a red light.

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So, we just finished deposition a tractor trailer driver who was involved in a collision with a motorcycle that kill the cyclist. The truck driver had been driving down a road with two lanes on each side of a grass median and he had taken a left turn. While being asked the questions in deposition, he was asked several times whether he turned from the left hand hand lane. He was asked whether he got into the right hand lane as some tractor trailer drivers are prone to do. They tend to take wide angles on the turn to allow the tandem wheels to track properly around the curb.

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Our firm is currently working with the family of Tre Little to track down a tractor trailer driver who caused a hit and run crash on I-285 at 5:30AM on November 15th. There is physical evidence that a Ford Focus was struck by the tractor trailer and slammed into Mr. Little’s car. Both of those drivers were killed by a third vehicle when they got out of their car.

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In the course of handling a lawsuit against an underage driver who was charged with DUI for civil damages stemming from a bad injury, we Googled the Defendant and one of the top hits was his more recent arrest for Minor in Possession. www.Arrestcentral.com and www.Bustedmugshots.com are two examples of sites that cull readily available arrest information and make it very Google friendly.
This can become a huge problem for you, especially if you have a unique name. If you have a common name, a search on you are your city of residence is likely to return hundreds of responses. But, if you are uniquely named and have an arrest record that has been scraped, odds are that a prospective boss or nosey parent will locate the information.

Can they publish that information? Don’t I have privacy rights?

Yes, they can publish any true public information. Yes you have privacy rights, but an arrest record is public and your privacy rights are trumped by the First Amendment rights of the publisher. The same holds true for a newspaper reporting your arrest. So long as they don’t cross the line and say that you are guilty, as they did in the Richard Jewell (Olympic Park Bombing Suspect) case.

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